Blackburn System X8 Led Light..advice/reviews

There are no reviews on the Blackburn System X8 Led Light but there are plenty on the X6 and they pretty much suck. Does anyone know if the X8 are supposed to be better. Here is what is advertised:

$129.00

All LEDs are not created equal! Blackburn uses premium, super-bright LEDs in their bicycle light line. This yields a longer lifespan and more output. X8 includes two heads with LUXEON III emitters (1 spot beam, 1 wide beam). Both head units have 30%, 70%, and 100% modes, plus a flashing mode, so you can adjust them to suit your runtime and brightness needs.

I had the system x6 and was quite pleased but didnot know any better then .
I then swapped out the luxions for 2 cree Q5`s and the difference was remarkable even though the optics were designed for the luxions .

the x6 did get lots of bad comments on the forums and when the x8 came out not alot had changed . still luxion 3s when there are better leds out there .
so people will still remember the bad press and steer clear so maybe of the 90 odd people who have looked no one has this light set.

Thanks troutie. I appreciate the help. I really need to get a good light for a good price before summer is up. This past winter, with it getting dark so fast, I found myself riding at night a lot more and as a result I almost got hit by cars on like 3 separate occasions. I don't want to deal with that again this coming winter. I have looked at some of the posts on here to make your own lights and that is very appealing to me. However, I have never worked with electronics and soldering stuff. Hell, your comment

"I then swapped out the luxions for 2 cree Q5`s and the difference was remarkable even though the optics were designed for the luxions ."

doesn't make much sense to me. I'm assuming you replaced the bulbs correct?? I wish I could make my own, there is always more gratification when you make something over just buying it.

I only responded to this lame thread because I wanted to increase my posts count.

I say it's worth buying the X8s for cheap if you change the bulbs over. It's a pretty easy thing to do, and makes a world of difference.

I may buy one of those sets, just for the new battery. Always good to have spare parts about, too...

Hey, do you have any info or tips about cracking these open and replacing the LEDs. I would love to give it a shot but I can't find any information online and don't want to break open my 1 week old light system without any background knowledge. Also, what kind of LEDs would fit into the X8 casing without much modification these days and suck about the same amount of energy? The P4 has since been surpassed (though I'm sure it is better than the Lux III), right?

I had one of these for a short while which got replaced by a Triple shot.

It was not as bad as the reviews would make you believe. Most of the complains people had (me included) were about the battery having that odd stupid shape or arriving dead. I experienced both but got the battery replaced by the manufacturer at no cost. Blackburn now changed the shape of the battery so if you can update the leds you would end up with a nice system for the money. Something really nice of this light is that the electronics allow for different power levels and has a strobe setting for road riding.

Well, I ordered the system from Jenson a couple weeks ago and it came in pretty quickly. BUT instead of having a spot light and a flood light, it came with two flood lights. I called up Jenson and they told me to ship them one of the lights back and they would send me a spot light as soon as I gave them a tracking number and they refunded the shipping. I'm happy that they are taking care of me but still a little off becuase there was a mistake to begin with and they didn't even overnight the correct light to me. Oh well, as long as everything works out in the end I guess. I should get the spot light today. The battery has been charging for like 10 days so I hope to get the full amount of lighting time from it. All over the owner's manual it tells you to charge the battery fully and drain it fully a few times in order to get maximum time from it. It also advises that you are to always keep it charging (if you aren't riding). Whether it be for a few days or a few months. I really hope that I have good luck from here on out. I will keep everyone posted either way. So far from what I have seen of the sytem it is very nice.

I only responded to this lame thread because I wanted to increase my posts count.

So, I got the spot light in about 10 minutes ago and there is a chip out of the LED housing. The shiny silver cone thing. Anyways, just got off the phone with Jenson and I will again be sending them back this light and they will next day me another. I hope things work out because this is getting annoying. There customer service has been great though and as long as this gets fixed I will continue to do business with them.

I only responded to this lame thread because I wanted to increase my posts count.

JensonUSA called me back tonight and advised that the "chip" I was seeing is on all the lights. They offered me a refund if I wanted to send the lights back. I'm testing them out now to see how it all works out. When I look closely at the flood light I can see the same issue in the same spot of it. Maybe this is just how things are supposed to be? I'll take pictures later and post them up. Right now I have a fully charged battery running both lights at full power and seeing how long they last. It's been an hour so far and beside the fact that they get pretty damn hot I think that they are working great. The two of them can light up my living room just fine. As long as the battery lasts then I think I made a good choice buying this system.

I only responded to this lame thread because I wanted to increase my posts count.

2 hours and 46 minutes of run time with the lights initially on 100%. However, and I didn't notice this until about 2 hours 20 minutes into the running, the lights didn't run at 100% the whole time. They automatically dimmed. I noticed that they had dimmed so I hit the power button and the light went into strobe mode (should have gone to 70% after hitting the button once then to 30% if you hit the button a second time). I hit the button again to go to 100% and it would do it for a split second then dim down. I can't tell if it dimmed to 70% or 30%. I think it would be 30% because when going through the power ranges the strobe option is after the 30% option. I will try again tomorrow night and see what happens.

I only responded to this lame thread because I wanted to increase my posts count.

They did get pretty hot a couple times but i put them in front of my window a/c unit to cool them down. Tomorrow night I will make sure a regular fan is blowing on them at all times and I will try better to determine when they start to dim on their own. Thanks for the heads-up yetibetty.

I only responded to this lame thread because I wanted to increase my posts count.

I replaced my X6 with a crappy battery for an X8 (Thanks JensonUSA for refunding me for my 6-months old X6!)

Charged the X8 up once (~2.5h charge time) and it immediately ran 3h at 100% before shutting off ie more than what Blackburn specs! (For comparison my X6 gave me <50 mins @ 100%...) Also, the X8 battery is MUCH smaller/lighter than the X6 battery.
(Besides that, the X8 comes with a neat bag for the whole system unlike the X6)

Bottomline: the X6 is way inferior to the X8, even if the X6 is decent value for the money the X8 is a much better option.

Ok, now I've tested both the SSC P4 (U-bin) and the Cree XR-E Q5. They are both much brighter than the original LED so a swap is definitely recommended.

The Cree is about 20% brighter than the P4. However the beam pattern of the Cree is not as nice with the supplied lens. I simply skipped the white plastic spacer that sat around the original Luxeon LED to make the lens come in closer to the Cree. That greatly improved the beam pattern. (Buy an o-ring at Homedepot (1,1/8" diameter) to hold the lens down - you don't want it to be moving around when you ride).

See picture below where I have the Cree without (left) and with (right) the spacer (both spot lenses). The P4 looked much like the left beam only a bit weaker. An added bonus(?) with the Cree is that the die of the LED is smaller than for the P4, which theoretically means that you can focus it narrower. That would be good for the spot but maybe not terrific for the wide beam.

Using the Cree's without the spacer gives you a nice beam spot - true, but the total output is not optimized. I found that I could squeeze out about 10-15% more light if I modified the spacer (see picture 2, Post#11, little white ring to the right).

Take some sand paper, grind the spacer down to half it's height, with your exacto knife make cutouts so the spacer sits tightly against the LED board. Voila! Nice beam - high output.

How are people running the two lights on this system? both on the bars? my thought was to run the flood on the handlebars and the spot on my helmet, but it doesn't look that feasible given the single battery..

How are people running the two lights on this system? both on the bars? my thought was to run the flood on the handlebars and the spot on my helmet, but it doesn't look that feasible given the single battery..

Well, you can... The X8 comes with two cables and they are long enough for you to have both one on the bars and one on the helmet. You end up having a whole lot of cables wrapped up everywhere and it'll be messy when you dismount and even worse if/when you fall.

I'm considering getting a second set and mount the two spots on the helmet and the two wide beams on the handlebar. After upgrading the LED's I'll have 1000lm for less than $300!

Hey, do you have any info or tips about cracking these open and replacing the LEDs. I would love to give it a shot but I can't find any information online and don't want to break open my 1 week old light system without any background knowledge. Also, what kind of LEDs would fit into the X8 casing without much modification these days and suck about the same amount of energy? The P4 has since been surpassed (though I'm sure it is better than the Lux III), right?

Problems with changing the LEDs: Has Blackburn changed the design????

Hi guys,
After reading your posts about "pimping" the X8SL I've bought an Blackburn X8SL Set a couple of days ago and ordered some new LEDs.
Now I wanted to change them, opened my lights and now I've a problem:
They look totally different to your pictures.
The LEDs in my two X8SLs are not mounted on a star???
And also the "heat sink" (the piece made of copper in your pictures) is missing?!
What can I do now?
Just mount the star in? But what's about the heat transfer?
Thanks for your help.